"I think it'd be to your benefit to go," Celistar was saying.

"The Ancient One's wisdom in this circumstance can not be downplayed" said Brother Cháo. Which didn't seem to add anything but was just a lengthy way to indicate his agreement.

"What about what I think?" I replied to them.

Liam happened to walk by right then, "Does that matter?" He said, grinning at me like a little demon.

I mean, he wasn't wrong. He'd since kind of gotten his head around what sort of situation we were in, so he was making fewer mistakes.

It was about a month after we finished the spar with the Iron Veil Order. Not a lot had changed. Sect Master had stayed in the Circle, and had been serving a similar role to Qīwù, but for 'Elder Gran'. Apparently her pie had been so life-changing he'd pledged his remaining years in service to her.

He did look a fair bit older than he had when Celistar had broken his Core, which made me cringe when she'd explained what she'd done, from within the relatively safe confines of one of our meetings in my Soul Sea. That explained the noise.

He'd aged fairly quickly for a few days immediately after, but then settled into a smaller, more wizened version of himself thereafter and the changes had stopped. Apparently the Nebula of a cultivator supported their body in many ways, Celistar informed me, and what she'd done would eventually kill him - well in advance of when he'd pass otherwise.

Which… I didn't know how to feel about that. Yes, he'd threatened my family. Yes, it was Celistar's place to discipline members of her Circle.

Yes, I was probably too much of a squishy soul for all of this. Sigh.

I had to shake the thoughts out of my head and get back into the conversation, which was essentially being held to determine part of my path moving forward. Celistar had mentioned something about "flowers in a greenhouse" in regards to my future growth, and said that I needed to get out into the world again.

Easy for her to say, I'd just gotten used to the weirdness of being a 'Venerable One', as well as having overcome the end of the world, in a literal way.

But she wasn't wrong, this whole… whatever you wanted to call it was starting to make me itchy. And it wasn't just me. I was pretty sure that Viktor was going to start having to punch himself soon.

Even Steeve had gotten into the act, as the fox started melting over furniture or into puddles on the table; staring directly into the sun until her eyes burned out of her head; or fading her color away until she was an indistinct white, fox-shaped blur that didn't even have an outline.

So yeah, message received.

Which led to this conversation - during which I learned that the traders that regularly visited a lot of the isolated sects had brought news of rumors of newly discovered ruins. But we didn't know where the ruins were. Or what was in them. Or really anything about it.

"Wouldn't it be cleaned out by now?" I asked. It seemed like a fair question. By most standards, we were way out in the hills, as the nearest population center was hundreds of kilometers away - many days journey even with the magical transport. Surely by the time mere 'rumors' got here, whatever it was of interest at the location in question would be long gone.

"I wouldn't be so sure," Celistar said. "It really depends on the nature of the ruins. The Will of the World is likely at play here."

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Ah, I thought, as it suddenly clicked where she was going with this. During one of our earlier 'Soul Sea-nces', she'd explained that the Will of the World had a habit of driving certain kinds of scenarios - either conflicts, or what she liked to term 'whetstones'. Basically, they were a locus of power the world generated that were designed to entice cultivators into them by rewarding them with some sort of artifact or technique. Both the reward and the experience gained while achieving it would 'sharpen' the skills of those who committed to the often dangerous undertaking.

Generally they formed in areas that were either abandoned or had met some form of cataclysmic end, meaning the Will of the World didn't need to form them out of whole cloth and could just call attention to existing knowledge that had been forgotten or had drifted out of the annals of the very long history of this place. Some of them were even purpose-made inheritances - which often had, uh, 'eccentric' criteria for being passed down. Luckily for me, this didn't seem to be one of those.

Since the only way I'd get it would be if the creator had a predilection for awkward redheads with two left feet. I mean, they weren't really both left feet, I just walked like they were. I'd tripped over thin air at least three times in the last week. My walking skills made floating myself around on Nebula seem like the less arduous path to take, some days.

"So, why would that make it any less likely to be cleared out?" I asked.

"Because," she replied, looking meaningfully at Brother Cháo, "these things never just appear for no reason. There's usually someone, somewhere, with a bit of destiny for them. Maybe even several someones. I think it's you."

"Why me, though? What makes you think that."

"Vibes, mostly." She said, winking at me. We'd gone into conversations about some of the odd affinity I'd had with Artifacts prior to running into the feather, and she'd been highly amused at my 'vibes' based approach to sorting them. Or my description of such, one of the two. She'd brought it up several times as a sort of way to bypass actually explaining something when she wanted me to figure it out on my own, the cheeky little moon monkey.

"Fair enough," I said, somewhat begrudgingly. Brother Cháo was in the dark on this, so he just looked on like we were speaking something profound. That did leave one question for discussion, though. "Who am I bringing along?"

"I am so glad we can use this," I said, referring to the conveyance that my three companions and I were riding in. We were trundling along a rocky outcropping on the trail that was hewn through the jungle to the nearest city. It was going much faster than I could walk, and had an interesting quirk in that the more power you could supply to it, the smoother the ride became.

According to István, that was because there was a 'suspension' of sorts that formed between the upper and lower half when Nebula was injected, making the passenger compartment essentially 'ride' on the air.

He'd worked with the Circle's artisans on this particular one, which had a lot of ornate decorations and more of those comfy pillows like the one's I'd been given in my meeting room. Not that I minded. They'd really pulled out al the stops. It was emblazoned with jade seals on the sides marking it as belonging the Azure Sky Sect, and they'd even created a logo featuring the flowing figures of our two mascots, Steeve and Yuèyīng, artistically at play on a cloud.

Apparently the fox herself had summoned both the cloud and then forcefully teleported the bird from wherever she'd been resting to serve as models for the artwork when she'd found out that they'd been interested - she'd overheard István talking about it.

Yuèyīng had not been happy about it at first, but Steeve had mollified her by summoning some sort of flame that burned in interesting hues. Basically catnip, but for phoenixes.

Thus they'd become our sect logo. Flame included. There was an engraving below it of a sort of sect motto: 'Clear Skies, Clear Minds; Together, We Rise.' The first half of which was inspired by something I'd said offhand when an inner disciple of the Stormwing Circle had asked me for my wisdom regarding inner conflict.

It was totally deep and wise and not just me saying random bullshit because I got nervous and blurted out the first thing that came into my head. That embarrassing memory then got seared into my brain by people using it as the formal, polite greeting for the Venerable in question.

The second part was a bit of a tongue in cheek joke 'The Ancient One' had made, also at my expense. We both knew she was referring to the way our fates had intertwined, but everyone else assumed it was related to how fortunes at in the Circle had made a turn for the better once we arrived. I will admit her way with words was impressive though. She could make cleaning and outhouse sound like some sort of vaunted, important job if she wanted to.

At the rate this is going, someone was going to wind up writing a book about every misfortunate thing to tumble out of my mouth or interact with me.

I shuddered involuntarily at the thought.

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